Interludes are canon, but not necessary to read in order to follow the main story. They include funny side scenes (humor), info dumps about Creation or the Exalted's powers (background), and long list of possible actions and their pros and cons to help players choose their next step (guidance). The last two categories are almost always Zeph talking to Taylor. A lot. Because this is here to explain information the players might need for their decisions, but are not necessarily important to follow the story, so if you don't like Exposition you should consider not reading them.
Or at least not reading them all in a row.

As long as there is a [X] on a line, it counts as a vote. But all the line is counted and he won't count two lines together if they differ by a single character.
I vote for [X] option A
will NOT be counted with
[X] option A

Every time you shorten the vote by removing something from the line I wrote or you make a typo while repeating it, it creates a new vote to keep track of. And this is really annoying to handle in the end. I've spent up to an entire HOUR sorting votes, and half an hour more than one time. If you screw your vote up it causes a non-negligible amount of unnecessary work for me. Very much not negligible.
So please, don't be a dick and just repeat the line verbatim. Copy & Paste makes that easy enough.
So if there is even one character off in your vote line, I can just ignore it. And I have ignored vote that were badly written. I have also spent several hours correcting small mistakes in votes, so I'm not merciless, but please, I don't have much time as it is. Don't make things harder on me.

I am insisting because I've said this often and it is still common. In fact I made a comment about a specific thing to avoid today (shortening the vote), but before the day was over there were 6 voters who had done it. Right after my explicit request not to do it, including a quote of what to do.
So since posters often ignore this, I feel it needs to be repeated. If you are going to add a comment on the same line as your vote ("[X] Option A, because we're worth it!"), shorten it ("[X] A"), or are going to make a typo ("[x] Optin A"), you might as well not bother posting.

Another mistake to avoid is to spread your votes across multiple posts. I think it only takes the most recent post including a vote into account.

If you see PosterA has posted a complex plan you like, instead of repeating every vote, you can say
[x] plan PosterA
or
[x] PosterA's plan
However you need to get the name right, if the poster is "larekko12", saying "[x] plan larekko" won't work.

Also, the program isn't perfect. Occasionally it bugs and won't count a vote. If you see that your vote is missing in the tally (Ctrl+F "your name" is a good way to check fast) tell me and I'll add it in manually.

I am going to give a short explanation of what the first link talks about, the structure of the options I give at the end of an update.
There are two things. First how to handle an issue in the next update. And the other is that the options are usually various degrees of a reaction to what is happening or various degrees of a feeling.
The first is what you need to look at to know what each option will make happen in the next update. The latter is what sort of meaning it has for Taylor, and how this choice will shape her future actions.
All the options are about handling the same issue, or achieving the same thing. If you can see what it is, you'll have a much clearer idea of what the difference between each of them is, and what you can expect to happen from choosing one over the other.

When voting, explaining why you chose this specific vote is important for three reasons. First there is the obvious reason, if other posters like your explanation they can follow you, so that makes your vote more likely to win. Secondly it lets me spot misunderstanding and correct them, so that you don't vote for something completely different that what you actually meant. Last but not least, the vote alone doesn't determine all the details, and one of the important thing that tell me how to write the effect of a vote is why the players chose it.

Here's a list of the main things that influence what Taylor decides to do during an update, roughly in decreasing order of importance:

The vote itself, obviously, but the ones you have discarded as much as the one you have actually chosen ; if one is "explain" and the other is "ask them to trust you", choosing the latter won't have you try to gain their trust by explaining.

The stunt. Describing how you go about doing the things you've decided to do is what a stunt is all about. A stunt can make me completely change what I had originally planned during the writing of the options of the previous update. Of course if I don't like the stunt you have provided, it will be ignored, but it's the easiest way for you to control more precisely what Taylor does.

Taylor's character sheet. If you choose "fight", your lack of weapon skill and your martial arts mastery means you are going to use your bare hands. Obviously things like Intimacies and Motivation and such will affect your decision if they are relevant.

Debates about the vote. I always pay close attention to all sides of an argument when players discuss what they should do. If you bring up an advantage to your favored course of action, unless I have a reason to disagree you can expect said advantage to be represented in the update. If you explain how a problem in the choice can be avoided or mitigated by doing something, there's a good chance I'll use your selection.

Reason why each poster has picked a vote. While I won't pay as much attention to those as the properly constructed arguments, I will read each and every one of them. I'll try to fit as many as possible, and try extra-hard for those that are repeated often. For example if many posters who select "Running Away" explain that they do that because they don't want to hurt the misguided heroes trying to arrest Taylor, I won't have her topple a building on them to cover her retreat.

Taylor's past decisions. If Taylor has solved problems by talking more often than anything else before, when she encounters a closed door she is capable of kicking down or opening with her burglar tool, she will instead decide to talk the person on the other side into opening it for her.

Results of the un-chosen votes. If there is 10 votes for "Ask them to trust you", 8 for "Explain", and none for "Run away", I am going to have Taylor hint at a few things while asking her friends to trust her, which wouldn't have been the case if "Explain" hadn't gotten any vote. So even if the option you had voted for wasn't chosen, it might still not be useless.

Experience:
Experience points come from different sources.
As in the normal game, 3d stunt give +1XP. There is also the +5 XPs from the Story completion each time an arc is completed, like in the regular game. Due to the different of pace between the pen & paper game and play-by-post, the arcs are closer to what is normally a session. For example here Updates 1-9 and 10-19 form two different arcs. They are centered around one significant event each, Taylor's Exaltation and Taylor joining the Undersiders respectively.
Then there are XPs per update, which are the equivalent of XPs per session. A normal story update is worth 1 XP, +1 if you made a good stunt & choice for the RP bonus. Occasionally an update will be very short and not much will happen, so it'll have -1XP, but on the other hand if it is particularly long and eventful it can warrant a +1XP. Interludes are normally worth 0 XP since they are not supposed to feature any character development. But if I spend a lot of time writing a large one (like Preferences), it'll give 1 XP. Omakes written by other posters that are good enough for me to include in the main index are normally worth 1XP.
Finally you can get XPs from OOC things, as first mentioned here. Mostly, it is about guessing things about the game. Discussing what is happening and how the world works is good for the Quest, so I am encouraging it this way. Guessing what lies beneath one of the seals of the Maidens is worth some XP, depending on how important and hard to guess the secret is. Guessing plot points ahead of time is also worth XPs.

As for Experience cost, we are using flat cost for every Trait except Essence, meaning that it isn't more expensive to improve an Ability as its rank raises. Mostly because the more you advance and the more each Charm is powerful, while Traits don't get the same effect, so giving a flat cost to magic and not Traits makes things way too unbalanced and leads to almost no one increasing them after chargen.
This also allows the unification of chargen and regular game to avoid pushing the players to munchkinize and create ridiculous stats. To see how it works exactly, see table below.

Sojiko said:

Here are the XP costs used here (for the Traits this is the cost for a full letter rank increase, partial payment removes a '-' or adds a '+')

Training:
Training for Charms takes the normal time (for the non-Exalted players: as many days as the Charm require ranks of Ability if Favored, and add the ranks of required Essence on top if it is unfavored). Training for Traits is as flat as the XPs costs, 1 week for unfavored Abilities (if favored, it is instantaneous) and 1 month for Attributes, regardless of rating.
Your HUIs are very good tutors, so they can reduce the time to train the stuff they knew best in life.
Things you do during the game can count as training to related things. For example spending a week crafting things count as 7 days of training Craft Charms. Spending a day planning a heist with your group counts as training for Larceny. Etc ...
You can occasionally mix several training together but Abilities are all technical knowledge, even Athletics and Resistance. The part you can train with mindless work are Strength and Stamina, not the Abilities. Trying to focus your mind on several things at once is hard, so you won't get the full effect from both.

Finally, you can stunt your training, which will reduce the time needed for something to count as your day of training. Same goes for having a good teacher.

Traits:
In this game Traits are represented by letters instead of dots. First that's because it gives the game that Quest feel, rather than being an Exalted game. It is more familiars to non-Exalted players, and I want it to be as accessible as possible. Then it's easier to see the difference between A and B at a glance than between 00000 and 0000.
Another reason is that the "+" and "-" let me have more granularity. That's good because it lets me represents human with more precision, and show progress more easily. Favorable conditions can let a "+" turn into a rank bonus, and unfavorable conditions can turn a "-" into a rank penalty.

For those who wonder, F is equivalent to - (that's zero dots), and E to 0 (that's one dot). It normally goes up to A for 00000, and if there's a way to break the normal limit for trait it goes up to AA, then AAA, S, SS, and SSS for the max possible trait of 00000 00000.
For Abilities a F means that one just doesn't have the Ability in question, and a F+ shows some familiarity with the topic. Someone with the ability to do first aid but who doesn't know squat about anything else in Medicine could have F+, and someone with a good enough knowledge of guns to know how to use them but who lacks any sort of practice might have F+ too, so he'd be considerably less likely to crit-fail and shoot himself in the foot since he knows all the safety rules to be observed at all times with firearms. F- means that not only do you lack any actual skill in the area, you are especially untalented, and probably have wrong assumptions likely to make matters even worse. Someone with Presence F- not only has no social skill at all, but he could have a strong tendency to insult others and make them angry at him, so a crit-fail is more likely.

For those who wonder about Background, they can be purchased for XP or not. If you do pay for them, they become part of you on a metaphysical level. Since XP represents soul-stuff, paying some to acquire something means it you somehow infuse it with some of your being. That is why Charms that protects your Traits from modification (like Integrity Protecting Prana) can be used on them.
Another advantage is that they are secure from the vagaries of life. A friend who is an Ally paid properly will not one day change his mind, or be subverted by someone else. You will not accidentally lose an Artifact you have paid for. It almost always takes direct actions by a heroic character for you to lose a Background. If you are fighting a parahuman with powerful mind control, they could turn the friend above against you, and your Artifact could be destroyed in a fight against Crawler, for example.
If you do lose a Background, you can recover it much more easily than you normally would, and the points paid to protect the old one apply to the new one. So if Leviathan ruins your Resources invested in the businesses of Brockton Bay, you'll have an easier time becoming rich again and when you do, you won't have to pay to protect it.

Available Charms:
To the question "is X Solar Charm available for us to learn", the answer is "almost certainly, in some shape or form". Whether the Charm is canon, written by a big name like TDO or Earth Scorpion, or one of your own creation, it works the same way:

If I judge the Charm is OK in the game, you can just use it.

If I notice some issues with the Charm, I'll tweak it to correct them

If the Charm is badly problematic or has a fundamental flaw, I'll rewrite it entirely

If the concept of the Charm is garbage, the answer is "no" and "kill it with fire"

Here are some guidelines on what to expect:
TDO Charms are almost all fine as is, he writes in a way that is eerily similar to mine (except way faster). Jon Chung doesn't write a lot of Charm, but they are very solid mechanically (although some stuff is now out of date since they were written to address some rule issues that have been corrected this game). Things by Earth Scorpion and Revlid are usually just fine, they are very good Charm writers. Plague of Hat isn't bad, but most of his stuff is old and written for an old metagame, tweaks will often be required.
A number of 1E Charms can be adapted to 2E with some simple tweaking.

[x] Keep talking with the Undersiders, but don't immediately resume the topic of us joining and give the current tensions some time to calm down. Open up a bit and give the Undersiders some information/insight on ourselves, to reciprocate the trust they've shown us so far; taking us to their base and letting us see their non-cape identities. Broach the topic of joining some time later, when we feel that both we and the Undersiders can think about it with a clear head.
- - > Start out by offering a genuine apology for some of the things we did or said during this scene. Then, ask for a first aid kit to take care of our arm, and offer to do the same for Rachel's lips if none of the Undersiders have the medical knowledge necessary. If allowed to help Rachel, see what we can do in regards to her voice.
- - > When done, explain some of our feelings to them. Don't get too much into detail though; they would probably feel uncomfortable if we'd just dump all of our troubles on them, and we would feel uncomfortable sharing too much at once. Instead, try and keep things somewhat vague, and related to the immediate situation; how Rachel's attack reminded us of bullies from school and we became a cape to get away from that shit, with hopes of making some friends amongst the Undersiders if we'd join.
- - > After our explanation, tell them we're still interested in joining, if something like this won't happen again. They don't have to decide immediately, though; if they want some time to think and talk things over amongst themselves, we'd understand.

Once all of you, save for Rachel who is still downstairs with the dogs, are back in the living room section of the loft you turn toward them and open your mouth. Then you close it as you have no idea what to say. You are standing in front of them, and they are standing in front of you, but no one is sitting down on the couch and armchairs. You fidget for a moment before the silence gets to you and you just decide to jump in head first and see what happens.
"I'm sorry."

Where did that come from? You're not sorry about what you did to Rachel. That was the best way to start your relationship with her in the given circumstances. You couldn't have built something healthy if she had hated you and thought she could walk over you any time she chose to.

They look at each other for a moment, exchanging something unsaid. Wait, shouldn't your translation magic let you know what they're saying here?
It isn't working anymore. Weird, last time it had stayed on for much more than a few minutes. You make a mental note to ask Zeph about that.

Brian is the one to speak up, "It's OK, at least you were careful not to hurt her too badly and I can see why you'd be pissed after being attacked out of the blue like that."
You almost speak up to tell him that's not what you're sorry about, but then change your mind. Instead you just let that lie and try again, "OK, then, sorry about creeping you out."

"I might have exaggerated a bit back there. A lot actually."
Alec is the one to respond, "Really?"
You nod, "Yeah. For example the black widows are ..." You pause for a couple of seconds, then settle on, "Basically I made them unable to bite. They can't do it until I undo it. That's like putting on the security on a gun or locking a knife in a sheath." You fumble a bit. "Just because I use insects as weapons doesn't mean I don't pay attention to basic safety."
Grue nods to himself, is he a looking a bit calmer? Alec doesn't seem to be reacting the same way, though, "Really? And how do those wasps fall under 'basic safety'?"

You're not really sure what he's talking about, so you try for a scatter shot. "The part where I didn't take them with me? And they're not as dangerous as I've said, those are mostly things wasps can do, but not the same species of wasps. And if they were reacting by reflex they wouldn't be doing anything that ruthless. Just regular wasps doing regular stings. That's painful, but hardly as gruesome as the image I painted for Rachel."
After a second you add, "And again, I decided not to take those. Because that might just be an insect sting but that's still not safe. Even if I have epipens in case of allergic reaction." You tap the pocket where you keep that as you say this.

You sit woodenly on the armchair behind you, trying to get the other to sit in the couches. Maybe if they settle down it'll help them relax.
Lisa decides to sit down and the rest follow.

You decide to continue apologizing. "I'm also sorry for ranting at her like that. I was trying to get her not to attack me again, but she's ... difficult to communicate with."
Alec rolls his eyes and answers, "You could say that, yeah."
"And by the time I had realized what I had gotten myself into, I had backed myself into a corner."

That gets Grue's attention, he focuses more carefully on you as he asks, "What do you mean by that?"
"I had made this into a struggle for dominance to stop the dogs from attacking me, but that meant that if I backed down before getting Rachel to acknowledge that she was wrong, she'd conclude that she had won and that she was right to attack me." In the back, Lisa nods.
Alex, however, does not seem to think that this explains thing. "Oh, come on. Rachel doesn't always make sense but that's pretty ridiculous." he then folds his arms, waiting for an explanation. From the slight hint of a smirk you can see, you don't get the impression he's being confrontational, though.
You shake your head, "No, it's like this ..." And you trail off here as you search for a good example to make it clear to them. After a dozen seconds or so you perk up, "Look at her dogs."

The non sequitur seem to take Alec and Brian off guard. You push on before they can object, "If Brutus decided to attack her she would probably lose the fight, and any of her dogs could easily kill or maim her once they're all bulked up. She's used to dealing with things that have the physical capability to tear her apart. The thing is that what they can do doesn't matter as long as they won't do it."
Brian obviously gets it, "You mean that if you had backed down you'd have been telling her you were unable to hurt her. That she could push you around any time she wanted because in the end you wouldn't really do anything about it."
And then Alec concludes, "You couldn't let her think that you're all bark and no bite. OK, makes sense I guess."

You nod. "I had to find a way to break this up without backing down. I could have tried beating her up until she asked for mercy, but honestly I didn't want to go that way." No need to tell them why. "That left me the option to talk her into thinking she shouldn't have attacked me." They simply listen to you. Even Alec seems to be paying attention, even if isn't nearly as intense as Brian or Lisa.
Now that you have started, you build up steam. Your speech start to gain a little confidence. "I tried everything I could think of, from making her sorry for doing this to me, to making her afraid of me. To make her feel ashamed of hiding behind her dogs, to reach her with words or my tone. I just kept trying stuff and finding out that she just didn't give a shit. "

Seeing that you're making progress, you're speaking with assurance now. "I'm not sure if you've noticed this but she relaxed as I ranted at her. She wasn't quite on her way to take a nap, but she was starting to get bored. She was just waiting for me to finish talking. After so much ranting she had guessed I would be doing nothing but blow hot air at her."
You shrug, "The more I spoke, the more I was losing. I had to find the one thing I could use to make sure my next try would stick. So I started thinking about what to say carefully. About how to say it to make sure she wouldn't be able to brush it off. And then I went over the speed several times in my head to make sure I had everything right."
Now they all nod, apparently getting why you dragged things out so much.

"So, I wanted to apologize about creeping you out with the bug thing and with the incoherent yelling and the overly long pause. If I hadn't decided to handle this on my own, I wouldn't have gotten myself stuck trying to get out of it by myself."

That said, you feel the need to bring up another topic. "Would you have some first aid supply? I'd like to take care of my arm if possible. I could try to see to Rachel's wounds if you want, I have some first aid training."
Alec answers that second part, "We all have first aid training here, Brian's idea. I think it'd be better if Lisa handled Rachel. I can take care of you."
Brian stands up, "No, I'm going to grab the first aid kit. I shouldn't have let this happen, so I need to do something to make up for it.

~oOo~​

You managed to convince Brian to let you attend to your wound on your own, that way he didn't have to ask any question about your lack of bleeding or the things you put under your sleeves to give your arm a bit more volume. You've finished bandaging your arm and are starting to wonder if you should say something when the awkwardness is broken by Lisa's return.
Coming back from below, she is wiping her hands on a towel as she makes her way toward the rest of the group. She is also alone, apparently Rachel didn't want to come up. After she flops back on the couch, she tells you, "Since we're apologizing, I guess I should throw mine in."

That gets your attention.
"It might be my fault that she thought she could get away with attacking you. You see, I used my power to get a reading of what happened during the fight with Lung and I apparently went too far into speculations."
Now that's interesting. "What do you mean? And what did you see?"
She steeples her fingers and starts explaining, "My power is basically super intuition. I can draw conclusions from very simple clues, and I can gather most of what's relevant in a scene with a simple glance. More importantly I can fill gaps in knowledge, if I have A and C I can guess B. The more data points I have the more details I can fill in and the farther I can extrapolate."

That's certainly impressive. You keep listening. "Usually I start by getting a few conclusions in the direction of what I'm looking for, and then use those new data points to move further ahead until I get the answer I'm looking for. The thing is that if I go too far into speculations, the small chances of mistakes adds up and the data gets less and less reliable so I end up with false positives and garbage conclusions. I get tunnel vision and ignore important things because I'm too focused on the goal."
You nod, that makes sense. That's the sort of thing you have to be careful of yourself when you do the sort of reasoning that let you identify Regent as the artist earlier.

You throw a guess, "So you used it to get a read on what I did to Lung and came up with something wrong, which lead Rachel to believe I wasn't much of a threat." Seeing her nod you can't help but ask, "Well, now I'm really wondering what that could have been."

She doesn't stop to think and sort out all her speech the way you'd do, she just begins without hesitation or perceptible planning. Is she using her intuition to come up with something on the go? Was she anticipating this and had something already planned? Or is she just going to speak about her power and what she knows about you without filters?
"The first thing is that I had noticed he had been very seriously weakened by the insects. And the pepper spray. Brown recluses, black widows, wasps, fire ants, brown-tailed moths, the works. Of course those could only sting him before he monstered up, which would make sense. With your sort of power you'd start with an overwhelming ambush to pump as much toxin in his system as possible."
That's pretty close. You actually hesitated much more than you should have and didn't attack seriously until he had already started bulking up so you didn't have as much of a chance to unload before he got his scales up as you could have. Otherwise that's pretty much spot on.

"From what I saw he spent some time struggling in the street, using his fire to clear the bugs. Then once he was immune and wreathed in fire to prevent you from trying anything else, he jumped to the roof. I could see the marks he left while climbing his way up."
You nod to encourage her to continue. Once again that's exactly it.
"And on the roof, there wasn't much. Since Lung was heavy enough to leave deep marks, I could tell what direction the fight took. What I saw was a fighter using superior physical prowess to keep the other on the ropes, and superior martial skill to prevent evasion. There were signs of Lung going through the roof then a wall during the pursuit, too. Given how tough and skilled in martial arts Lung is, we thought that it was him running after you, that you had played matador and let him run into walls while evading pursuit."

That's actually surprisingly close to what happened, she just got the roles reversed.
"Since his regen depends on how much of a fight he's getting, you'd have avoided fighting him as much as possible while letting the toxins do their job, using some Thinker power to see how to get out of his way and not get plastered. Then when he eventually dropped you walked to him and we arrived on the scene."

Yeah, avoiding a fight might have been the smart tactic there...
"When I saw you, I got the impression that your power was mostly Master/Thinker. With maybe some minor physical improvements added in, but powers firmly in the planning and influence categories, overall."
She shrugs, "I'm not sure how I ended that far off, but that's what lead me to think you wouldn't have taken him with fighting power."

You are about to respond when you are suddenly deafened:
*GIRL! YOU NEED TO MARRY HER RIGHT NOW!*

Ouch.

You try to hide your flinch.

*We can not possibly let such a delicious young woman with such an extraordinary talent get away from us! You go and march up to her right this instant, and make your proposition. Do you hea-*
*Sorry about that. I've shut her up for the next 30 minutes, don't mind the crazy broad.*

"Are you OK Taylor? You seemed a bit ... distracted." You're not sure if Lisa is concerned or inquisitive.
"I'm OK, I'm just really surprised you could tell this much." Drats, no, you weren't supposed to say that. Abort, abort. No, can't do that, have to roll with it.
She makes the look of the cat that ate the canary, "Really, now? Do tell."

You need a couple of seconds to get things straight. Thankfully you had prepared your layers of masks, so it's pretty much instantaneous compared to what it'd have been otherwise.
"The thing is that my original power was pretty much just a combination of Master & Thinker. When I started fighting Lung I couldn't jump from building to building or punch through brick walls."

Now that gets their attention. All of them including Alec who had pretty much tuned out when Lisa started her explanation. Brian is the one to talk. "You mean you got a second Trigger during the fight?"
"Maybe? I'm not an expert at that sort of thing. I do know that I couldn't do any of the glowy thing and physical stuff before fighting Lung. When he jumped on the roof and I realized that he was faster than me and more maneuverable and that he could track me and that my power couldn't do anything to him anymore, I ..."

No one talks while you look for the words.
"Frankly I wouldn't know how to describe it. But one moment I was standing there certain I was going to die in the next couple seconds, the next moment I was glowing and I started kicking his scaly ass."

You finish, "I crashed when I got home, and I haven't had a lot of time to experiment with my new powers. I can jump better, strike hard, and I'm apparently fireproof. From the effect of the bite, definitely not Brute-rated, though."
Lisa sums up, "Some low level Mover and mid-ranked Striker ability then."
"Yeah, I guess."

Deciding to use the opening, you ask Brian, "What about you guys? I saw that your power was shadow generation."
He smiles, "I've added that part to the wiki myself. It's actually more than that. I can create a darkness that is completely opaque to light and also dampens sound. It has other limited effects like weakening some Breaker powers or cutting off radio signals and radiation. At least that's what Tattletale's power tells her."
"Indeed."
"But I'm not about to test it."
*WHAT? How can he deny the call of SCIENCE! Unacceptable.*

You manage to ignore the outburst. After all it was nowhere near as loud as the last one.
*sorry, shutting up now*

"I can see and hear just fine through it, and Bitch's dogs can smell through it without problem. I can also continue pumping more shadow stuff to expand the area covered and revoke any part of it at will when the rest of the team need the mobility."

"That's pretty handy. That leaves you Alec. What trick the mighty Regent might have?" Moving on to the last member of the team.
He laughs, then answers, "The name is a pretty long story, but what I do is this." He points his hand at Brian who is raising a bottle of water to his lips, and then fumbles the move and splashes water all over his face before dropping the bottle on his lap.
"Way to look good in front of the new girl, butterfingers!"

Grateful for the break in the tension, you can’t help but laugh too. While Alec continues laughing, Brian springs to his feet and runs up to the smaller boy, at which point he grabs Alec in a headlock and begins punching him in the shoulder repeatedly. This abuse only makes Alec laugh harder in between his cries of pain.

Lisa turns to you, smiling at the prank and play fighting between the boys, “It’s a bit complicated to explain, but basically, Alec can get into people’s nervous systems. This lets him fire off impulses that set off reflexes or make body parts jerk into motion. It’s not a dramatic power, but with timing, he can make someone fall over midstep, drop something, lose their sense of balance or pull the trigger on a gun.”

You nod, absorbing the information. It sounds very underwhelming, but you are willing to admit you could be underestimating it. Nevertheless, there is something fishy about his cape name so you decide it wouldn't hurt to check.
"Is that it?"
"That's plenty enough, trust me."

'Trust me', she says, in other words 'I know better than you'. Which is only reasonable, even without her incredible power she is the one who has all the experience fighting alongside him.

~oOo~​

"You're learning quick, dork." Alec begrudgingly admits, once again on the Tekken character selection screen.​

"Ha! You can still talk like that? I've been kicking your ass pretty hard." This old Heihachi dude is really good.​

"I still have more wins than you do, dork, don't get ahead of yourself."​

"Ooooh? Realllly? That's just all the losses I've racked up when I was learning the moves and you wouldn't go easy on me. Now you shall pay for your lack of mercy! Heihachi spares no one." You even manage to add a halfway decent evil cackle to go with this.​

"You still have a lot to learn. You'll see I always keep a trick up my sleeve."​

He continues, "So how did you figure it out, I did try to keep it a secret and you saw right through that with just one demonstration. One of your thinker tricks?"​

You shrug "Not exactly, it is rather obvious." He gives you a look which is a mixture of about a fourth incredulity, a fourth irritation, and half bored aloofness.​

"Really. You chose Regent as your Cape name. Almost no one chooses a name without a connection to their power. There's nothing between provoking spaz out and a regent. So I was reasonably sure there was something else to your power."​

He seems a little bit disgusted. "Oh come on! That's it?"​

You shake your head. "No, that just made me think there was probably something. You did gave me an explanation for the weird handle. Or rather an evasion. But you mentioned some history while you are the one member of the team that left no trace I could find. Apparently no one has heard of a "Regent" out there, so the chance of there being a story about it are a bit on the low side."​

You pause, and then ponder aloud, "Unless you had a different handle and are now using Regent to get away from the old identity, which would explain using your power differently. Well, I'm probably reaching with that, it's just an idle thought."​

Alec just nods, waiting for you to continue. You oblige, "So then Lisa explains your power, and she seems a little bit too eager to justify that it's good enough on its own and that I don't have to dig deeper to justify your presence on the team."​

And then you conclude, "Spontaneously denying that there was anything else to your power when I was wondering about it sparked my curiosity so I asked about it. She evaded the question, being careful not to lie directly. That pretty much cemented it from possible to probable. So I asked you."​

Alec asks for a clarification, "OK, I get why you'd think there was more to it, but why hijacking?"​

"Because there are only so many ways to make 'can interfere with the nervous system' and 'Regent' fit together, you know. If you want to keep this trick a secret you should choose a handle that doesn't broadcast that you use your power to rule over other people, and the outfit doesn't help. Even if it's really nice."​

After thinking on it for a few seconds Alec just says, "Nah, not worth the hassle. Up for the rematch, dork?"​

"You bet!"​

~oOo~​

As Alec bends down to shut down the console he asks you, "So what was that paper you gave Rachel, anyway?"
You shrug, but then realizing he can't see you since he's turning his back to you, you answer, "Nothing much, just a little something to let her know I don't have to be her enemy. That we could get along."
"OK, now I'm really curious to know what it was."

As he's returning to the couch he asks you, "So you have other papers like that."
...
"... no."
After all you don't have any other drawing of Bitch cuddled in your lap. So it's not a lie. Really.

"Oh really? You know, we have way of making you talk. We are ruthless super villains who are not going to stop at anything to get the answers the want ..." he lets his voice trails off ominously. He raises his hands toward you, "... not even ..."
A vicious smirk appears on his face as he prepares to lunge at you, "TICKLING!"

You are ashamed to admit that he took you so off guard that he managed to grab you and pin you to the couch while he started to tickle you armpits. You quickly reversed the situation with your vastly superior martial arts skills, but the struggle ended up much more difficult than you'd have guessed.
Any time you got a good grip on something important, he'd use his power to make you release him, so you had to resort to hard joint locks that let you block your own muscle tremors. That or multiple points of control. On the offensive side he'd make you buckle in the wrong direction to prevent dodging, or make the arm you were trying to parry with bend away from him.
That, and you are vastly more ticklish than he is.

Still, after many minutes of enforcing hilarity on each other, you stand on your knees over his prone and wheezing form. He's holding his ribs while crying out, "Please have mercy, my queen! I shall never again attempt to usurp your throne!"
You are about to respond with an equally cheesy line when you notice Brian and Lisa standing in front of you. You bumble for a bit and close your mouth. Lisa's smile gets even wider. Somehow.

You go to the bathroom to get your clothes back in order. And the small improvements you made part of your disguise, like the increased bust. And not to hide your blush.

You quickly make your way back to the living room, and there you find that Alec has not only managed to recover his breath enough to stand and settle on the low armchair, but he has also started to look at the handful of creased papers. Which looks a lot like the paper used for your drawings.
No ... He couldn't have ... could he?
You pat the pouch where you keep them, and notice that it has been unbuckled.

Oh the sneaky little ...
Nope, no time for that.

You stride into the room, trying not to appear to be hurrying. Lisa and Brian seem to be both interested in what has managed to grab Alec's attention like that, because he is obvious fascinated by the paper in front of him. He has his mouth slightly opened, as if he had started to say something but had stopped midway, and had forgotten to close it.
That'd probably be the drawing you had on the top of the pile, the one of the team together around the couch eating pizza while watching the TV.

Shouldn't you be doing something?
Alec places his left hand on his forehead, then he looks at you and says, "OK, I am now officially impressed, dork."
At that Lisa and Brian suddenly turn around, they hadn't noticed you coming back out. Brian seems a bit puzzled, but Lisa is giving you a predatory smirk. You do not like that smirk.

Since they are both looking at you they do not see Alec moving on to the two other drawings, or his eyes suddenly go wide, or him standing up. However, the "HOLY SHIT!" does not escape their notice.
Brian asks him, "What's that?"
Without looking up from the second drawing, he hands over the first one to Lisa. She takes it eagerly and hurry to take a look for herself. Her eyes go wide immediately, and she turns to face you.
"What's this! How did you do it?" She is holding the drawing, which as expected is your most accurate portrait of her, right next to her face, as if to illustrate its accuracy.

Great. Maybe you shouldn't have brought them over here. Or maybe you shouldn't have underestimated Alec. Also, damn that Reya for signing those with your name.

~oOo~​

"OK, now I see why you said that Tattletale's costume and mine didn't hide our identity." Alec concludes after your wrap up your explanation.

Brian is still looking at the drawing of the group hanging out together. You try not to dwell on the fact that he looks nothing like the Grue from that drawing. He then looks up to you and says, "So you really wants to join the group right?"

You try not to act shy. "Well, yeah. I wouldn't be here otherwise."
He jumps on the occasion, "So why don't you just join? I'm OK with your condition, so why don't you join now."

This is it. "OK, but I don't want that sort of shit to happen again."
Lisa fields this one, "Don't worry about Rachel attacking you again, I am pretty certain she doesn't want a repeat performance." You see Alec give a little nod at that while Brian appear a bit uncomfortable.
"No, I mean, yeah there's that too, I did become a cape to get away from that sort of stuff, but that's not what I meant. I meant the way Bitch was driven into a corner and acted out of desperation because she couldn't tolerate the vote of the majority. If we can't have better communication, we need some sort of veto system or something."

You discuss this for a few minute when Lisa decide to come back to a point you brought up earlier.
"What sort of thing were you trying to get away from?"

You hesitate for a moment. Are you comfortable sharing this? No, not everything. But you can give the general idea.
You gather your courage and begin, “There’s three girls at school that had been making my life pretty goddamn miserable. Doing pretty much everything they could think of to make school suck, humiliate me, hurt me. Each of the three had their individual approach, and for a good while, it was like they were trying to outdo each other in how creative or mean they could get.”
You manage not to shudder, and put this behind you. "Anyway, I decided to become a cape to get away from that life. Put it behind me, forget it exists. I'm testing out of school now and I'm not going to see them again. I want to focus on my new life and not ever have to deal with that bullshit again. Or anything close."

Alec then proceeds to ask you why you don't take revenge, and you try to explain that you don't want to do it, and you don't want them doing it for you. You conclude with this: "Look, it was already hard enough for me not to tackle them to disembowel them with my bare hands. And that was before I could do this," you punctuate your explanation by raising your arms in blade-hand position, "so right now I don't trust myself to do something that won't escalate to a full-on Carrie Event and me bathing in blood. I don't want that. And if I tried anything that would mean that they matter to me. Fuck that noise."

Alec seems confused, and a little bit frustrated at his inability to understand you here, "Then if you won't even take revenge, why did you even become a supervillain?"
"Escape." The word escapes your lips immediately.
“I can forget that old shit, if I can leave it behind for this. Kicking ass, making a name for myself, hanging out with friends. Having fun.”

It kind of surprises you, but you realize that what you just said is true. A second later, you realize you might have been a little presumptuous. “I mean, assuming that we are frien-”
“If you finish that sentence,” Lisa warns you, “I’m going to slap you across the head.”

~oOo~​

Since the sun is going to rise in a couple of hours, you decide to leave shortly after the earlier heart-warming moment. Yes, you think you can learn to enjoy being part of the Undersiders. As you step in the dark alley you notice a figure, watching you.
Rachel. Bitch.
And her three dogs, of course.

You decide to re-activate the Charms you had used earlier to understand her, and suddenly you see it.
She is standing at attention, looking for guidance.

What to do?

[ ] run away: the crazy bitch is not your problem
[ ] talk with her: you owe her to give her a few pointers after the earlier dressing down
[ ] take her under your wing: you destroyed her and now you can rebuild her

After the discussion about changing the voting habits of the group, you have a feeling that they will:
[ ] seriously consider your arguments
[ ] eventually realize that you are correct <Taboo Inflicting Diatribe>

No, it really isn't. The victims are under order to "ignore the Solar's presence". Therefore anything that doesn't acknowledge her presence is OK and anything that does is verboten. Difficult to be any clearer.
Yes, but that doesn't change anything. Both interpretations lead to the same result.
No, this is very much not an option, the Charm is clear about that. By doing that Bonesaw is acting as if the Solar was present, and therefore does not ignore that he is here. Mental Invisibility Technique clearly forbids that. Bonesaw doesn't have to ignore the consequences of the Solar's actions, so she can go fetch new tools, but that's it.
You are thinking that Bonesaw isn't seeing the Solar. She does! Just fine too, he's not hidden at all, and her sense work perfectly, she is entirely aware of his presence. You are thinking that seeing the tools absent is somehow different than seeing the Solar right in front of her face. Both are just as easy to see for her. She does have the mental capacity to see the missing tools and conclude that there is a Stranger. But since said Stranger is busy blowing her a raspberry and waving his arms, she had already reached that conclusion.
The thing is that she cannot do anything with said conclusion.

Click to expand...

I disagree with that. Acting on the presence of an invisible intruder is not the same as acting on the Solar's presence if that conlcusion is reached by means other than seeing or generally sensing the Solar himself. Basically, I consider it similar to the difference between an Attack and an Enviromental effect. There's some point where fire stops being an attack and becomes an enviromental effect, and vice-versa. Likewise, there's a point where "acknowledging the Solar's presence" stops and "acknowledging an (invisible) intruder's presence" starts.
Where that point is is vague, which is what I meant; one could either go with your interpretation that people ignore everything that the Charm covers everything the Solar does or did, or the Charm could only cover the Solar himself, and not his actions, or anything in-between; the Charm write-up itself doesn't make it clear.
If nothing else, however, what you're describing sounds less like an Essence 2 Charm to me, and more like an Essence 3 or higher Charm/-upgrade.

Though, unless it becomes relevant to the story/quest somehow, I'd suggest stopping the discussion here, and maybe shifting it over to the Exalted Debate thread. Maybe write a post over on the White Wolf forum; see what the people there think.

Good quest. Also, I'm surprised how just about everyone ignored that Tattletale has been touched by the Maiden of Serenity. That could mean one of two things: Destiny, or Exaltation, could it not? If she is exalted, then she could be trying to become vizier-like to our Glorious Solar Queen.

Click to expand...

The "touched by the Maiden of Serenty" most likely refers to Tattletale/Lisa now being homo- or bisexual, rather than hetero-/asexual, due to how she reacted to Taylor's looks.

As it so happens, there is a Mantis Style, yes. Beyond that, though, nothing. At least no dedicated bug-styled MA, though it might be possible to adapt some of the existing ones a bit to give them a more bug-like theme/aesthetics.

This isn't the meat of the 3rd part (that being Taylor joining the Undersiders) but that'll tide you over while I'm at my appointment.

...
Damn, Spacebattle ate my formatting. Gotta fix that.
Speaking of unexpected things, this post managed to get a Like before I even posted the story. Uh.

If you read this now, you can skip the rest of this post.
For those who don't want to find the new part of the update in the post above, here it is:

"You're learning quick, dork." Alec begrudgingly admits, once again on the Tekken character selection screen.​

"Ha! You can still talk like that? I've been kicking your ass pretty hard." This old Heihachi dude is really good.​

"I still have more wins than you do, dork, don't get ahead of yourself."​

"Ooooh? Realllly? That's just all the losses I've racked up when I was learning the moves and you wouldn't go easy on me. Now you shall pay for your lack of mercy! Heihachi spares no one." You even manage to add a halfway decent evil cackle to go with this.​

"You still have a lot to learn. You'll see I always keep a trick up my sleeve."​

He continues, "So how did you figure it out, I did try to keep it a secret and you saw right through that with just one demonstration. One of your thinker tricks?"​

You shrug "Not exactly, it is rather obvious." He gives you a look which is a mixture of about a fourth incredulity, a fourth irritation, and half bored aloofness.​

"Really. You chose Regent as your Cape name. Almost no one choose a name without a connection to their power. There's nothing between provoking spazz out and a regent. So I was reasonably sure there was something else to your power."​

He seems a little bit disgusted. "Oh come on! That's it?"​

You shake your head. "No, that just made me think there was probably something. You did gave me an explanation for the weird handle. Or rather an evasion. But you mentioned some history while you are the one member of the team that left no trace I could find. Apparently no one has heard of a "Regent" out there, so the chance of there being a story about it are a bit on the low side."​

You pause, and then ponder aloud, "Unless you had a different handle and are now using Regent to get away from the old identity, which would explain using your power differently. Well, I'm probably reaching with that, it's just an idle thought."​

Alec just nods, waiting for you to continue. You oblige, "So then Lisa explains your power, and she seems a little bit too eager to justify that it's good enough on its own and that I don't have to dig deeper to justify your presence on the team."​

And then you conclude, "Spontaneously denying that there was anything else to your power when I was wondering about it sparked my curiosity so I asked about it. She evaded the question, being careful not to lie directly. That pretty much cemented it from possible to probable. So I asked you."​

Alec asks for a clarification, "OK, I get why you'd think there was more to it, but why hijacking?"​

"Because there are only so many ways to make "can interfere with the nervous system" and "Regent" fit together, you know. If you want to keep this trick a secret you should choose a handle that doesn't broadcast that you use your power to rule over other people, and the outfit doesn't help. Even if it's really nice."​

After thinking on it for a few seconds Alec just say, "Nah, not worth the hassle. Up for the rematch, dork?"​

As it so happens, there is a Mantis Style, yes. Beyond that, though, nothing. At least no dedicated bug-styled MA, though it might be possible to adapt some of the existing ones a bit to give them a more bug-like theme/aesthetics.

Click to expand...

There is another almost unknown Bug-styled Martial art, Centipiede style.(Also know as "The style that flurries a lot").
Sojiko, i have a question for you: are we using the canonical version of sorcery?

"Why would I care? If it breaks we can rebuild it, better and stronger. We have the Wyld Cauldron Technology.""The Cauldronists were dangerous mad men that destroyed a quarter of the universe with their foolishness, you should definitely not taking your cues from them! Are you a mindless drone incapable of even considering the world around yourself?"

Part of my term paper due later this week, no real time for long reviews for another couple days.

Bestial Traits Technique is immediately useful given time. Exalted cares not for your silly physics, yes let's give this flying Beetle a Str/Dex/Stam of 3, then MA and Athletics 5. Optionally on top of that Size +30% but really the humor and use factor is infinitely better just keeping them as a small death bug (until we get Panacea to make us a huge one to start with).

Only after BTT starts bumping into caps would Spirit Tied Pet be useful to make a special bug like that a familiar.

Mind, some of the cost-savings on BTT/STP would be that Taylor can just puppet her bugs so she doesn't need to bump the intelligence or Valor. If she decided to go off theme, then grab Spirit Tied Pet first and use it to get a good familiar, then BTT for training.

Or! BTT only and just train Bitch's dogs once she's trustworthy though it would probably take a fair amount to get her that far and then on top of that trust Taylor to train her dogs, even with obscene tangible benefit involved.

In other news, you can now purchase Spirit-Tied Pet and Bestial Traits Technique. Both are going to be exceptionally useful to Taylor. Discuss.

Click to expand...

BTT might be very useful if it works on more then one animal at a time. If it does then we could train Taylor's bugs to be more intelligent which IIRC was one of her limiting factors. She couldn't give them complex long term orders due to their limited intelligence.

Even if it can we could still probably train up a ton of Dogs for Bitch to use her power on.

As for STP I'm not really seeing how it will be useful. The wiki doesn't really give any detail about the bonuses of a familiar and having a singular favored animal isn't really Taylor's style.

BTT might be very useful if it works on more then one animal at a time. If it does then we could train Taylor's bugs to be more intelligent which IIRC was one of her limiting factors. She couldn't give them complex long term orders due to their limited intelligence.

Even if it can we could still probably train up a ton of Dogs for Bitch to use her power on.

As for STP I'm not really seeing how it will be useful. The wiki doesn't really give any detail about the bonuses of a familiar and having a singular favored animal isn't really Taylor's style.

Click to expand...

Retyping real quick and rough

Benefits of a familiar:
Different mechanical interactions for certain Charms (see BTT)
Won't die from old age
1 dot - No additional effect, just have it (all bugs start here)

Now, STP then would let her gain additional effects on a bug familiar (or anything else in that category, cat, dog, whatever) by adding more dots onto her Familiar background
2 dots - Animal communicates with you through posture and facial expression, can understand and perform simple tasks
3 dots - Large dangerous pet (tiger/dire wolf) OR small pet that is Intelligent as a child of 8 or 9 years, can fetch items/do chores, but is easily distracted. Familiar can communcate with you as well as if it were speaking, when touching your character, additional 5m of Essence available, treated as Personal, stored in familiar, can share one of its sense within 100 yards
4 dots - Larger pet (eagle, wolf) that has the extra benefits of 3 dots
5 dots - Powerful/dangerous pet that has the properties of 3 dots

How useful BTT is in regards to Rachel's dogs largely depends on whether the effect of her power is static or dynamic. Ie, whether it gives the dogs it's used on a bonus to their existing attributes, or if it sets their attributes to a fixed number.
In the latter case, BTT would be greatly reduced in usefulness, but given how her powers interacted with the wolfpup she got from Siberian, it seems to be dynamic. In which case we could use BTT to turn her dogs from "merely" huge and tough monsters into veritable tanks who can easily doze through buildings.

Using BTT on bugs honestly seems like a waste of time to me. BTT takes a week for each improvement, and the large majority of bugs aren't exactly long-lived.

If we get a familiar, I think we should go for a bird of some kind, ideally a raven or crow. They can imitate human speech, which combined with training them to adult human intelligence would let them act as excellent messengers or scouts. Being able to share senses with them while within 100 meters/yards would allow us to get an aerial view on things with minimal effort. And they're much less likely to freak people out than a huge spider or the like.

Though, compared to the possible benefits of BTT in conjunction with Rachel's dogs, I don't think STP is worth it at this point. Throw in that much of what a familiar can do we can imitate using our parahuman power, and I think it should be fairly low on our list of priorities.
I still think our next purchase should be a Presence Excellency, though BTT would make a good choice afterwards.

STPing something to make it a familiar does stop short-lived pets from dying because of that, FWIW, if you missed that.

Weird combo:
STP a spider with a particular kind of silk
BTT it to full intelligence, then max Stam+Size
then it should count as a legitimate target for Harmonious Academic Methodology given human intelligence -> teach it the appropriate Craft and have it making stuff for you on its own?